


bear and chicken (and minimal beef)

by astudyinfondness (Elmcat)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe, First Meetings, Gang Beasts AU, M/M, they die but they regenerate right away because they're video game characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 06:47:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17575919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elmcat/pseuds/astudyinfondness
Summary: Dan and Phil are Gang Beast characters and meet when they're forced to fight each other.





	bear and chicken (and minimal beef)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Phandom Fic Fests DAPG flash fest. Based on [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm9wJ19JEAE)

Having grown up in Beef City, all Dan hears about is news of up and coming fighters in the meatropolis. The Boneloaf fighting business makes up Beef City’s reputation and profit, it’s the staple of Beef City and Dan feels like he’s a world apart from it all. Maybe Dan’s every move is defined by a piece of defective code. Maybe he’s just a fraud disguised as a pixelated gang member. Because everyone in the Beef City is into brawling. Dan’s got no beef against anybody in particular - he literally has no beef as the only occasional vegan he knows. Maybe he has some against the mega-corporation that has a monopoly on their city, but he hasn’t the heart nor the energy to put up a fight. Until now when he has to muster up the will to fight because it just so happens that today is the day when statistics decided it was his turn to be summoned into the arena. Because can you really be a Beef City resident without ever having fought in an arena your entire life? 

Dan’s gearing up to be zapped into the arena and he’s about to crap his suit. Dan is wholly unprepared to fight. He’s new to this. Dan, true to his four-year-old self’s word, is not the fighting sort. 

Dan is already the clumsy bear on his own two feet. His family used to call him bear because he lumbered like a bear. He doesn’t need the arena to know he’ll be showcasing his floppy long limbs and making his lumbering worse. He falls over when he stands up in the morning. How the hell is he supposed to get back onto his feet when someone’s corkscrewing on top of him or dragging him into a wood chopper? 

Though it’s not possible to die or even be injured in the arena, he’s certainly dreading the death of his dignity. At least he’ll have no spectators aside from a single Player 2 - Phil, as the server informs him.

He lifts his arms then kicks a leg out to inspect his costume. Dan doesn’t know whether the bear was too indecent an outfit for the ring. This is an outfit he could imagine wearing when lounging about. He’s a firm believer that everyone should sleep in the nude - it’s liberating and only natural as someone who comes into the world as a collection of pixels and code. However when it comes to fighting, there are some parts that he’d rather protect. Even if everyone regenerates and can’t feel intense pain in the fighting arena.

Next thing he knows, he’s in the arena. The first thing he processes, even with a flaming pit directly left of him, is his new opponent in a neon green chicken costume, red frilly thing and all. He’s relieved that he’s not the only one dressed in a quasi fursuit. 

But he’s frozen, he can’t unglue his feet from the ground. What do players do when they’re first teleported into the arena? Start a verbal fight? Catch their opponent with a running start to intimidate them? Should he let out of mighty bear roar? 

Before he can come up with other options, Phil hops into the fire with an impressive height.

Maybe Phil is new to this too. Or maybe he knew Dan was bad enough that he sacrificed a life to give him a head start. 

While Dan tries to orient himself in his new starting position, Phil says incredulously, “I didn’t even mean to jump.” So maybe Phil is new enough that Dan might be able to surprise him. 

Dan waddles forward and Phil paces back and forth erratically. Dan sticks out an arm, waving and floppy, and lifts Phil by the chest. At least, he tries to. 

“Oh God, I didn’t mean to drag you by the fucking dick,” Dan says aloud in horror. 

Phil just laughs. Dan doesn’t know if that’s a good sign or a bad sign. 

“Is this your first time too?” Phil asks.

“Uh, can you tell I don’t watch fights?” Dan deadpans.

“Oh good, I thought I was the only one,” Phil says, and Dan shares his relief more than he could express. 

“Well, we might as well make the most of the arena in case we have to fight someone else?

“You’re on, Scary Bear.”

Dan smiles, shaking his head.

He tries dumping Phil into the fiery pit a couple more times, neon bodies twisting and turning with all the grace of a first time gelatinous fighter, but he somehow manages it even if it only feels like random flailing that gets him through the round. 

Phil shoves him forward but Dan’s legs are not cooperating so instead of stumbling forward to regain his balance, he just bends at the hips and Phil walks into him.

“At least take me to dinner first,” Dan teases, accepting that there’s not much he could lose in this mortifying fight, if one could call it even call it a fight.

“I’m sorry I can’t control my limbs,” Phil squeaks. “I was trying to kick you.” It seems that neither of them have the coordination to fight.

“So was I,” Dan grunts.

Dan commands himself to kick Phil but he just ends up headbutting him and okay, there is no reason that his hips have to meet Phil’s at the the same time. He definitely doesn’t recall making his body to do that. He tries to get his legs to cooperate but keeps smashing his head into Phil’s and suddenly a train’s slamming into him before Dan even registers he’s tumbling across the yellow warning strip of the train station. And when did they get transported to a train station? 

Dan wakes up to Phil prodding his shoulder, and they continue their feeble attempts at fighting.

One of the first times Dan tries to throw Phil over the train station platform, he walks them both off the edge. Another time, he throws Phil off the edge, and Phil is squashed against the wall by the train and promptly flown to the other side like he’s a liquid elastic band. (“Um,” Dan hesitates, “I don’t know if that was supposed to happen but I would tell you to take it up with the MeatTelecom twitter to see if there’s something wrong with your server.”)

And although Dan begins to catch onto the haul and dump faster than Phil, sympathizing and laughing each time Phil crashes through each glass door or wooden panel, his pixel heart isn’t set on winning. He’s having fun with just the both of them. He never would have imagined that an experience in the arena would be the highlight of his life. Dan isn’t complaining, in fact he’s relieved, to find that their already low pressure fight situation has devolved into play wrestling and banter with a sprinkling of dance.

“Ooh it’s the chicken, watch out for your life.” It’s the false fight talk that sets Dan off into a fit of laughter.

Dan’s lost track of where he is and still hasn’t mastered how to grab without walking to his death, but he manages to lift Phil up once again.

“I’ve got you by the turkey bits!” Dan shrieks.

“My wattle.”

“Your whatel?”

“This thing you’re so rudely groping. It’s called a wattle,” Phil lectures. “And the frilly thing on top of my head is called a comb!” Phil adds on proudly and with a bit too much enthusiasm for the arena considering Dan’s swinging him around like a rope. Except he sounds excited and Dan likes that a bit, likes that it makes him smile, even if the warmth of his chest under the suit could just be the product of a glitch.

(Maybe the false fight talk also sparks Dan’s fight to keep Phil in his lonely existence, if only to bond over being two outcasts who dislike the very sport that defines their resident city.)

“Hm there’s an idea. Let’s retire early from fighting and run away from Beef City to pursue egg farming.”

“Like we ever started fighting!”

“Exactly. Run while you can before Boneloaf tracks you down.”

“Well, we’re stuck here until we finish the match.”

Dan boops him on the nose affectionately, but his club-like hand just knocks Phil’s head backward. Go figure that the one time he does so effortlessly is by accident.

Dan mumbles to himself as he watches Phil parachute to the ground, “Oops! Sorry.” 

But Phil appears to forgive him, though, as the first thing he says when they assume their next start position is, “I’m glad that you were my first opponent, Dan.”

“Ditto.”

And because naturally he can’t control his long limbs, Dan hugs him with a whumph, flopping into phil chest first and sending them careening off the edge of the building.

**Author's Note:**

> uhh yeah that was a wacky idea but i still wrote it.  
> tumblr post [here](https://astudyinfondness.tumblr.com/post/182370952713/bear-and-chicken-and-minimal-beef-rating-g-word)


End file.
